Bianco has consistently polled in the double digits, even as his numbers dip approaching the wide-open June 2 primary election. Despite being a longtime Donald Trump supporter, Bianco lost the president’s endorsement to Steve Hilton last month — and on Monday, he warned that the former Fox News host’s lack of elected experience should concern voters.
“To be very frank, he’s for me more dangerous than the other Democrats that are running because we have an example of what they’ll do,” Bianco said. “But with him, he’s always behind the scenes. So he’s never run for elected office, he’s never had an elected office that there’s proof of concept with. And that really is what separates me.”
Bianco also took questions from Bay Area residents on public schools, housing shortages, road conditions, government fraud, the homeowner insurance crisis and immigration.
Here are three highlights from the town hall, moderated by KQED’s Marisa Lagos:
A vow to end sanctuary policy
Bianco was raised in a military family in Utah and moved in 1989 to California, where he’s spent more than three decades in law enforcement.
He said public safety should be the number one priority for the governor and took aim at the state’s sanctuary policies, which he said have made California less safe.
Bianco argued that if local law enforcement is barred from coordinating with U.S. immigration enforcement about people in their custody, federal agents are forced to take their enforcement operations into communities.
Since Trump took office, he said, immigrants’ trust in law enforcement has waned, leading to a “drastic decrease in calls for service” from them.
“They’re not reporting crime anymore because the media, the politicians and everything else have now convinced them that deputies and police officers are the enemy and you have to avoid us,” he said. “And now we know they are being victimized, and they’re afraid to report it to us. That is a failure of politicians.”
If elected governor, Bianco said he would eliminate sanctuary policy.
“It absolutely must be taken away because it makes us less safe,” he said. “It doesn’t make me safer. It doesn’t make you safer. And it does nothing to prevent or keep safe people who are in this country illegally.”
Less regulation, more homes
Bianco kept returning to his promise to reduce government regulation.
Breanna Shaw, a student at San Francisco State University, said she’s been unhoused or housing-insecure her whole life. She asked Bianco how he would “address the growing student housing insecurity and its effect on our educated workforce.”
Bianco blamed California’s regulatory environment, saying it takes three to five years to build a home in the state, compared with 90 days elsewhere. Much of the price of a home, he said, goes toward recovering fees and permits, driving builders away from affordable housing.
“There are no homes, affordable homes, for kids or first-time buyers,” he said. “That’s not like that in any other state. It’s only California because of the regulatory environment. And as the governor, I can remove that.”
Allegations of waste, fraud and abuse
Bianco said California has “never had a money problem,” but instead has a “horrific spending problem and a lack-of-accountability problem.”
Rose Usher, a disabled senior who could not make it to the event, submitted a question in advance about government fraud, saying it concerns her because it reduces the funding and availability of services she relies on. She asked what Bianco would do about issues like senior housing fraud.
In response, Bianco said he would audit “every single dollar” that flows from the governor’s budget for fraud.
“Our own state Finance [Department] has said that we are the most corrupt government in the country as far as fraud, waste and abuse is concerned because we do nothing to track fraud, find fraud, stop fraud, and we just keep letting it happen,” he said.
He went after the state Department of Justice for failing in its responsibility to root out fraud, accusing the department of spending too much of its budget on attorneys instead of investigators.
“Life should not be about suing people, it should be about going and finding the fraud,” Bianco said.
Bianco’s focus on fraud has extended beyond state spending.
In March, he seized hundreds of thousands of ballots from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters, launching an investigation into allegations of election fraud in the November special election on Proposition 50.
After Bianco ignored objections to the investigation from state Attorney General Rob Bonta, the California Supreme Court in April ordered him to halt the investigation and took up Bonta’s case, questioning whether the seizure and investigation were lawful.
“Here’s the dishonesty from the attorney general: They want you to believe I did something wrong,” Bianco said. “There is absolutely nothing wrong of what I did.”
Bianco told the Washington Post he would also consider seizing ballots in the primary election if there are allegations of misconduct.
